A series of executive orders, policy changes, and federal departmental reorganizing enacted by the Trump administration in 2025 disrupted research and federal services across the United States in unexpected ways. Multiple anti-trafficking organizations (including Freedom Network USA, the Corporate Accountability Lab, and the Global Association of Human Trafficking Scholars) responded with concern for trafficking survivors, anti-trafficking researchers, service programs, migrant workers, and other marginalized groups. What are the 2025 policy changes that are likely to have the highest impact on the anti-trafficking field, particularly in areas of prevention, research, and victim services? What impacts would we expect to see based on the cumulative effect of these policy changes together? While partisan politics largely dominate American discussions of presidential decisions, the Trump administration is not the first to decrease trafficking survivor access to victim services or to engage in mass deportations and harsher migration control. This project aims to explore the impact of recent policy decisions on anti-trafficking initiatives, while still contextualizing these changes within broader, long-term trends in federal policy. This includes policy impact research on areas that intersect with human trafficking (largely around race, gender, migration, etc.), data collection on changes in funded anti-trafficking programs and research, and an exploration of the response from anti-trafficking organizations and stakeholders. The presentation concludes with specific policy recommendations based on projected impacts and evidence-based policy analysis.
Dr. Glenn Harden is an Assistant Professor in Political Science at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky. One of his research areas is the transnational diffusion of human trafficking policy. He is a member of the Kentucky Human Trafficking Task Force.
Tatiana Rothchild is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Northeastern University. Her research focuses on human trafficking at national and international levels, particularly in areas of problem framing, state coercion, workers’ rights, human rights audit culture, and international policy models.